An online merchant may provide a large number of items for sale to customers over the Internet. Customers may access information regarding the available items through a website or other information service provided by the online merchant. The information regarding the items may include that information needed by the customer to identify and purchase a particular item, such as the name of the item, a picture of the item, the price and availability of the item, and a mechanism for initiating the purchase of the item. In order to enhance the online shopping experience and allow the customer to fully research a particular item, the online merchant may provide additional item information along with the purchase information. The additional item information may include a detailed description of the item, a list of features, technical specifications, as well as customer reviews of the item. The customer reviews may allow a potential purchaser to evaluate what other customers think about the item. The customer reviews may include a quantitative rating of the item as well as comments regarding the customer's experience and satisfaction with the item.
While the online merchant may wish to provide a similar shopping experience across all available items, the amount of additional item information available for different types of items may vary. For example, the items offered by the online merchant may include media products, including physical media, such as CDs, DVDs, and the like, as well as digital media available for download from the online shopping website, such as MP3 audio tracks. Because physical media sales may pre-date digital media sales and/or because of the difference in the ways customers shop for physical media versus digital media, there may be many more customer reviews available for physical media items than for the related digital media. For example, for a particular album of music, there may be many more customer reviews regarding a CD of the album than for the digital download of the album.
Further, while customer reviews from the CD may be salient for a customer wishing to purchase and download the entire album, the overall customer reviews may not be relevant to a purchaser of an individual track from the album, even when some of the reviews contain comments discussing the particular track. Similarly, sales of an individual item, such as a battery-operated drill, may outpace sales of a product set including the individual item, such as a tool set that includes the battery-operated drill along with several other matching battery-operated power tools. However, many of the comments made in customer reviews for the battery-operated drill may be of interest to potential purchasers of the tool set, such as comments regarding battery life, quality of the brand, and the like.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.